Minnesota Kinda Likes Donald Trump

Traditionally deep-blue Minnesota is trending red; one sign of this is that Donald Trump lost the state to Hillary Clinton by only a point and a half. Yesterday the Star Tribune released its latest Minnesota Poll. The paper’s headline was “Minnesotans divided over Trump; majority sees him as temperamentally unfit, dishonest.” But if you look at the actual poll results, they tell a different story.

The basic finding is that 45% of Minnesotans polled approve of Trump’s job performance, while 47% disapprove. Trump scores 89% approval with Republicans, and 46% with independents. There is no mystery about what voters see in our president: on the economy, Trump scores 54% approval against only 39% disapproval. 92% of Republicans, 63% of independents, and even 9% of Democrats approve of his “handling of the economy.”

The real takeaway here is that the Democrats’ daily effort to distract voters from noticing what the administration is doing with hysteria about Trump’s personality, “Russia,” etc., isn’t very successful, at least not in Minnesota. And paychecks haven’t gone up yet, following the GOP’s tax reform. If the economy continues to be strong and Trump avoids too many self-inflicted wounds, he is well-positioned to carry Minnesota in 2020.